Review: Juvia’s Place The Warrior Palette

Hello, my friends! I accidentally took an unplanned break from blogging in August – I had a few blog posts planned out and ready to go (this one being one of them), but never ended up posting them! I hope you all had a wonderful summer, even if it feels different from the summers we usually know.

Today’s post has been a LONG time coming – a review on the Warrior Palette from Juvia’s Place, which was kind of an impulse buy for me back in December of last year. I was in Houston at the end of 2019, and I tore through an Ulta in five minutes trying to find products that I can’t get my hands on in Canada. It’s hard to shop when you’re under pressure! Anyway, one of the brands I beelined to was Juvia’s Place, because it’s a brand that isn’t available back home. A lot of their palettes are more colourful and fun, which is not my vibe, so of course I had to pick the most neutral one there was.

After bringing it home, I never really used it extensively, because part of me regretted the purchase. Despite the fact that I am drawn to golds, they don’t always look flattering on me and sometimes they can be too bright for work. Only recently have I started using it more often because I felt bad that it was just sitting in my drawers collecting dust, and now I’m ready to review it!

THE BASICS

Meet our new bronzed goddess, The Warrior Eyeshadow Palette. A more edgy spin on our best seller Nubian Eyeshadow Palette. Golds, bronzes and browns. A golden glow palette to make your eyes pop.

The Warrior palette is a 9-pan warm-toned neutral palette consisting of golds and browns. It retails at $20 USD. Juvia’s Place palettes are cruelty-free and vegan, and is made in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I didn’t know this until recently, but Juvia’s Place is also a Black-owned brand. Their products are available at Ulta, Beauty Bay, and the Juvia’s Place website, which offers international shipping.

THE PACKAGING

The eyeshadows are housed in a sleek cardboard palette a magnetic closure and no mirror. It used to bother me when palettes didn’t have mirrors, but now I try to remember that it means less waste in terms of packaging.

The pans are absolutely gigantic- you can see below what the sizing is like compared to other palettes (like the ColourPop Brown Sugar palette below, which contains standard sized pans) – it makes the Warror palette look like face palettes in comparison!

THE SHADES

The Warrior palette consists of 9 warm-toned shades, 6 of which are shimmery and the remaining 3 mattes.  think this palette would look absolutely beautiful on those with medium to deep skin tones. In general, this is such a “bronzed goddess” palette, and I think would look especially stunning on medium to deep skin tones.

Amina – Shimmery camel
Idia – Shimmery bronze
Mino – Matte chocolate brown
Ahosi – Matte cream
Moremi – Metallic white gold
Kano – Matte caramel
Dahomey – Shimmery copper
Bakwa – Bright metallic gold
Benin – Metallic red-based taupe

What I really love about this palette is how cohesive all the shade selection is. There are no shades that seem out of place or can’t fit into a look. It’s well-curated in the sense that even though there are only nine shades, there are warm tones, neutral tones, and cool tones – Juvia’s Place really made the most of this palette.  However, there are only three matte shades, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your makeup habits. I think most people need a transition shade, and you may be missing one in this palette depending on your skintone – Ahosi may be too light, and Kano may be too dark, but there’s nothing in between. Ahosi just barely shows up on my light-medium skin tone, so I usually mix it with Kano and that seems to work well. Other than that, I think all of the other shades would look quite flattering across the spectrum of fair to deep skin tones.

I’m not a big fan of true golds and reddish-toned eye makeup, but was happy to find that there were a lot of wearable, work-appropriate looks that I could do with the palette.

THE PERFORMANCE

I found the quality of the shades to be inconsistent throughout the palette. The shimmer shades were intensely buttery and pigmented when swatched, and most of the mattes were decently pigmented and smooth. The exception was Mino, which was very dry and had poor colour payoff . There are a million high-quality dark matte browns out there and it’s a staple shade in the majority of my looks, which makes the performance of this one even more sad.

Strangely enough, despite the buttery texture of the shimmer shadows, I found that some of them did not apply super well on the lids, the biggest issue being the shade Dahomey – even with a densely packed brush, I can’t seem to get much on the lids. There is a decent workaround for this though, which is applying it with your fingertips. Obviously I prefer shadows that can apply just as well with brushes and with the fingers, but at least they’re not unusable.

My favourite shades in terms of performance are Amina, Adia, and Benin, which are all a dream to work with.

LOOKS

I ended up doing three looks with this palette, incorporating all of the shades available. I really enjoyed how different they all turned out – it just goes to show how versatile this palette is!

Look 1

The first look is a true neutral look. I used Ahosi as a transition shade, Kano to deepen the crease, Moremi in the inner corner, Benin in the middle of the lid, and Mino in the outer corner. I would be very comfortable wearing this to work!

Look 2

The second look is a bright golden look with Ahosi as the transition shade, Kano to deepen the crease, Idia in the middle of the lid, Dahomey in the outer corner, and Bakwa to deepen the outer corner. I actually really love this combo, but it’s a bright gold look that I honestly wouldn’t wear out of the house very often.

Look 3

The last look is a smoky cool-toned halo eye. This one is probably my favourite of the three! I used Ahosi as a transition shade, Bakwa in the inner and outer third of the lid, Amina in the middle of the lid, and Moremi in the inner corner. You can see how Bakwa is a bit difficult to work with – there’s a patchy spot in the inner part of the lid!

THE SUMMARY

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Well-curated colour selection
• Most shades are buttery and pigmented

Cons:

• Some shades do not perform as well

As you can see, there’s not a lot of cons to this palette! I hear a lot of people raving about Juvia’s Place so I was really looking forward to using this palette. The performance of a few shades fell short, but in general the performance was impressive, and well worth the $20 USD.